U.S. terrorism program challenged: Former Stanford doctoral student fights 'no fly' lists in trial

Source: San Jose Mercury News

On a January morning in 2005, Rahinah Ibrahim, a Stanford University doctoral student, prepared to board a Hawaii-bound plane at San Francisco International Airport with her 14-year-old daughter. A Malaysian national, Ibrahim, wearing a traditional Muslim hijab, was headed to an academic conference in Kona.

But Ibrahim's routine trip to the airport took a detour that day, sending her on a nearly eight-year odyssey through the American court system -- and transforming an esteemed architectural scholar into a crusader against the U.S. government's secretive system of each year placing thousands of people, mostly foreigners, on "no-fly" lists targeting suspected terrorists.

Ibrahim has disavowed any terrorist connections, yet wound up on such a list. And she has been fighting to clear her name ever since.

On Monday, she will take on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in an unprecedented trial expected to peel back the curtain on how the government assembles the no-fly lists, used to heighten airline security in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. For Ibrahim and civil liberties advocates, the trial also provides a chance to challenge how difficult it can be to get removed from the lists even when the government may have made a mistake in identifying someone as a national security threat.

Read more: http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_24634519/u-s-terrorism-program-challenged-former-stanford-doctoral